The Sunday Times, August 20th 2000
Bracken fit for Battle
Saracens' captain is back from injury to tackle his England rival
Matt Dawson. By Stephen Jones
If it is finally time in England for feeling good about rugby and
the prospects of the national tram, then it is time for feeling even
better, even deliriously happy, for prospects in the key position.
Most coaches burble about their strength in depth, with the wish
faltering the thought, but it is extremely rare for a national team
to have two contenders for one position who are genuinely of world
class.
England have two scrum-halves in those exalted ranks. Judged on
their best form in 2000, Kyran Bracken and Matt Dawson are among
the top four scrum halves in the game, and it is arguable that they
have greater all-round abilities than the other members of the
leading quartet, George Gregan of Australia and Justin Marshall of
New Zealand. Given a full recovery by Dawson from a shoulder injury
and freedom for Bracken from a horrendous run of injuries, then
Clive Woodward has at one time no problems in the position and yet
the most fiendish problem of selection.
So what are Bracken's views on "death-riding", the name that Aussies
give to the pastime in which you profoundly wish ill on the man in
your position? I put it to him that despite his stride-for-stride
rivalry with Dawson, they were above such selfish pettiness. "Of
course we're not," he says. "I would very much doubt that, in South
Africa, Matt would have been hoping that everything went really,
really well for me and that I scored loads of tries."
Bracken's grin suggests that the rivalry is not to be compared
with your better class of death-rider. When Brian Moore and Graham
Dawe were fighting their bitter battle to be England's hooker, they
neither talked to each other nor even acknowledged each other.
"Everybody asks how we get on," Bracken says. "The answer is that
we are friends. We are different sorts of player but we admire
each other, and the competition between us, if anything, has brought
us closer together. When you break down the scrum-half skills,
some people might say Matt is a better kicker and I'm a better
passer - although Matt's worked hard on his passing and it's
improved tremendously. We both make breaks and perhaps he is a
more agile runner, and I'm a bit more explosive."
They are both natural leaders. Bracken begins his tenure as
Saracens captain today, when they open their Zurich Premiership
season at home to Gloucester; Dawson might still be captain of
England but for the injury which kept him from touring South Africa
in June. They both bring their personalities with them to the
pitch. They are both fiercely competitive, Bracken so much so that
François Pienaar, Saracens' director of rugby, was once heard to
bemoan the fact that he did not know how to pull back from painful
zones.
He's found enough of them, for sure. The circumstances of
Bracken's first match for England are well-known. He played
against New Zealand at Twickenham in 1993, drafted late in place of
the indisposed Dewi Morris. He played brilliantly, if eventually
on adrenaline after a nonsensical stamp way off the ball by Jamie
Joseph, the All Black flanker, wrecked his knee ligaments. In 1995,
he played poorly when feeling ill against South Africa and lost
his place at about the same time that glandular fever was diagnosed.
Eighteen months ago, he felt a disturbing hiatus in his back when
performing squats with a man on his back, heralding a despairing
period when his career was seemingly under threat. He is now 28
and has won 25 caps, but could have won 50.
The saga of Bracken's back cost him most of last season. The
original injury made the back vulnerable, he says: "When it was
under pressure, it went into spasm and it was agony." He came home
injured from England's pre-World Cup camp in Australia last year
and tried a variety of treatments.
He tried one which involved an epidural injection; he tried
Pilates treatment; he tried a kinesiologist, whose methods had hi,
"biting the bed in agony". The kinesiologist recommended training
through the back pain but it was all pain and no gain. He also
went to Eileen Drewery, the faith healer whose association with
Glenn Hoddle, England football coach, helped in part remove the
pressure from Hoddle's shoulders by relieving him of his post.
"It got to the stage where trying to get right was a full-time job.
I'd get in at nine o'clock having been out all day doing nothing
else except trying to get fit," says Bracken. It is at least
arguable that his understandable search for relief made matters
worse.
"In hindsight, I should have done nothing but wait, relax and give
it time to heal. I still had these underlying structural problems.
But I'd also missed out on the previous World Cup due to injury.
It was hard to accept defeat."
He had to settle for a media role in the World Cup, and after a
conventional operation, sat out most of last season. But he
returned gingerly for the final handful of matches and was chosen
for the tour of South Africa in the absence of the injured Dawson.
Such is the wheel of fortune.
When he returned to the England No 9 jersey in the first Test in
Pretoria, Bracken had the world on his plate. He was only part-way
to full match sharpness; he was playing at altitude in what turned
out to be a ferocious match; he had to absorb a whole barrage of
calls, tactics and combinations which had changed in his year away.
He complicated affairs further by convincing Jonny Wilkinson, the
half-back partner he had trained with all week, to drop out of the
match as they sat together on the coach en route to the Loftus
Versveld stadium: "Jonny was feeling poorly and was undecided. I
told him I'd once played for England when I was ill and got the chop
because of it. I said the last thing he should do if he felt ill
was to play."
With Wilkinson talked out of the team, Bracken had to strike up,
at an hour's notice, a new partnership with the talented maverick,
Austin Healey. "It's only what Clive Woodward says we should be
doing, learning how to adapt to whatever happens to us," he
reflects. "Perhaps we lost the Six Nations match to Scotland
because we didn't adapt to the unexpected."
Modest words. However, I felt that Bracken's response to the
various adversities in Pretoria was astonishing. He was fierce and
assured in a tumultuous match. His own assessment is that he did
not play well: "I should have taken their back row on more, I got
scragged at the base of rucks, something I took personally." We
found more harmony of opinion when discussing is performance in the
heady second Test in Bloemfontein, which England won. He was in
dominant form, breaking, kicking, choosing players with precision.
His back is now sound - though backs, sound or not, are backs:
"I have to be careful. I can't pile into the weights room with the
rest of the guys and start squatting big weights." But Bracken is
now glorifying in freedom from pain. So much so that he can revel
in, not recoil from, the prospect of the near-savagery of the
47-week season ahead. I put it to him that with an England place
to defend in a massive season, leading to a Lions tour in which he
will be a key figure , the last thing he needed was the captaincy of
Saracens, when the pressure caused by heavy investment and lack of
trophies is intense.
"I never thought twice," he says. "Look at our team-sheet. Look
what we are all about as a club in the hands of Nigel Wray and
François Pienaar." Nothing less, in my opinion, than a model for a
pro rugby club.
For the first few years of pro rugby, Bracken kept up his law
studies. Now he is the full professional animal, and delighting in
the headiness: "One thing I have learned in the gaps between
playing is how fortunate I am to be in such a fantastic sport.
People say there are too many games, that it's too hard. I get
paid very handsomely. Going to play and entertain at Vicarage Road,
or Kingsholm or anywhere else, is a marvellous job. To complain
seems to be a little cheeky."
These are in part the words of a player grown hungry for rugby
and needing the big arenas to further his battle with the splendid
Dawson. But it is encouraging to realise that much of Bracken's
vast appetite derives from the new soundness of the stage that rugby
has provided for its pro elite, and the excellence with which he is
likely to act upon it.
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